In the 21st century photography has come of age as a contemporary art form. Almost two centuries after photographic technology was first invented, the art world has fully embraced it as a legitimate medium, equal in status to painting and sculpture. This book provides an introduction to the extraordinary range of contemporary art photography, from portraits of intimate life to highly staged, 'directorial' spectacle. The vast span of photographers whose work is reproduced includes established artists such as Isa Genzken, Jeff Wall, Sophie Calle, Thomas Demand, Nan Goldin and Sherry Levine, as well as emerging talents such as Sara VanDerBeek, Rashid Johnson, Viviane Sassen and Amalia Ulman. This new edition revitalizes previous discussion of works from the 2000s through dialogue with more recent practice. Adding to the wide selection featured of work, Cotton celebrates a new generation of artists, who are shaping photography as a culturally significant medium for our current socio-political climate.

Public, Private, Secret explores the roles that photography and video play in the crafting of identity, and the reconfiguration of social conventions that define our public and private selves. Consciously framed by our present era, this collection of essays, interviews, and reflections assesses how our image-making and consumption patterns are embedded and implicated in a wider matrix of online behavior and social codes, which in turn give images a life of their own. Within this context, our visual creations and online activities blur and remove conventional delineations between public and private (and sometimes secret) expression; in fact, they multiply and expand the number of potential selves in the contemporary image-centric world. The writings address the various disruptions, resistances, and subversions that artists propose to the limited versions of race, gender, sexuality, and autonomy that populate mainstream popular culture. In so doing, they anticipate a future for our image-world rich with diversity and alterity, one that can be shaped and influenced by the agency of self- representation.

Mert Alas, born in Turkey, and Marcus Piggott, born in Wales, met in 1994, at a party on a pier in Hastings, England. Piggott asked Alas for a light, the pair got talking, and rapidly discovered they had plenty in common, not least a love of fashion. Three years later, the duo now known as Mert and Marcus had moved into a derelict loft in East London, converted it into a studio, and had their first collaborative photographic work published in Dazed & Confused. These days, Mert and Marcus shape the global image of such renowned brands as Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Fendi, Miu Miu, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, and Lancome, and public figures including Lady Gaga, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Linda Evangelista, Gisele Bundchen, Bjoerk, Angelina Jolie, and Rihanna. Their photographs encompass a wide range of styles and influences but are renowned particularly for their use of digitized augmentation of images, and a fascination for strong, sexually charged, confident female subjects: "powerful women, women with a meaning, a you-don't-have-to-talk-or-move-too-much-to-tell-who-you-are kind of woman." Bringing our best-selling Collector's Edition to an affordable, compact format, this collection explores the unique vision of a creative partnership that has defined and redefined standards for glamour, fashion, and luxury. Approximately 300 images from the megawatt Mert and Marcus portfolio are accompanied by an introduction by Charlotte Cotton. First published as a TASCHEN Collector's Edition, now available as an affordable, compact edition

An evocative photographic homage shot by renowned image-makers that celebrates the iconic archival fashion designs of Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein. From 2003 to 2016, Francisco Costa was the creative director and women s collections designer for the American fashion house Calvin Klein. It was a time of creative abundance, one that simultaneously supported both fashion design experimentation and its traditional crafts. In 2020, Costa revisited his fashion collections archive and invited twenty-one photographers to receive a box containing hand-selected prototype and runway clothing from Costa s Calvin Klein women s collections that could be used either as inspiration or directly as props and costumes within photographs. 555 is a collaborative project that celebrates the iconic collection s reanimation and visual transformation by an extraordinary congregation of participating artists and image-makers. Moody, contemplative, and provocative images featured range from observational and documentary photography to self-portraiture, evocative nude editorials, fashion photography, and visual records of artistic performances. Housed in a beautifully crafted, limited edition clamshell box, twenty-one unbound booklets, printed on various tactile paper stocks, feature photographic stories by Diego Villarreal, Marcelo Gomes, Nick Waplington, Jamie Hawkesworth, Hugh Lippe, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Joel Meyerowitz, Lea Colombo, and Collier Schorr.